Online marketplaces enable customers to search for or browse information regarding items that are available for purchase from a variety of sources and in a variety of ways through one or more networked pages or sites. For example, an online marketplace may offer items for sale that it owns and controls, as well as items that are owned by sellers, via one or more web pages or web sites. The sellers may elect to either deliver their items to a facility maintained by the online marketplace for distribution to customers; or maintain control over their items themselves, and cause ordered items to be delivered directly to customers who purchased one or more of the items.
When a seller offers items for sale on an online marketplace, the seller may do so subject to one or more conditions that it may define. Such conditions may include fees, minimum numbers or costs of items purchased, specific delivery times or other prerequisites. Additionally, the seller may establish such conditions based on any relevant factor, including but not limited to the costs that the seller may incur in offering the items for sale at the online marketplace, minimum or maximum capacity thresholds, or any other factors.
Recently, online marketplaces have begun to offer enhanced delivery services on orders for specific items in selected areas, usually areas having high population densities or concentrations of retail operations within short ranges. In some implementations, an online marketplace may offer short-term delivery services for orders of items that the online marketplace owns or controls (e.g., items that the online marketplace stores or possesses within a storage area of one of its warehouses or other storage facilities), or items that the online marketplace knows or believes to be reliably available on short notice (e.g., items that the online marketplace may obtain from one or more merchants within a close proximity).
In this regard, some online marketplaces are now configured to receive orders from customers, locate some or all of the items within facilities under their control, or identify one or more merchants having access to such items, and dispatch one or more agents or workers to transport the ordered items from the facilities or obtain the ordered items from the one or more merchants (e.g., preferably from merchants located along or near a route between a fulfillment center and a customer who ordered the items), before delivering the items to the customers who ordered them. In particularly dense environments, with sufficiently large and diverse item inventories both within online marketplace facilities or via nearby retailers, an online marketplace may offer delivery services to customers within as little as one hour.